Battlestar Pegasus DRADIS Screens

PDRAD_2D_WIP_20160726

A while ago, I made a set of icons for the DRADIS displays from the new Battlestar Galactica. Another artist contributed a recreation of the actual monitors, and I built on both to make computer screens for some cutscenes in the fan-made BSG video game, Diaspora. I figure sooner or later, I’ll probably need some more BSG computer screens using the design language from the Pegasus, rather than the Galactica. I’ve had some spare time recently, so I decided to recreate the DRADIS screens from the Pegasus.
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Observational Humor

Recently, my friends Brandon and Dave (as well as their co-host Clay, who I haven’t met but seems like a fine person) began a podcast, Observational, where they discuss documentaries “that are fun, crazy, or mind blowing.” During the development process late last year, they asked me if I would create the album art for the show.

First, we brainstormed a few concepts which I sketched out on pen-and-paper (you can see how I sketch in earlier posts, so I don’t feel like I need to subject you to that again). I then created three mock-ups in Photoshop, using the show’s working title, “Cinéma Vérité,” so we could get a sense of how the real thing might look.

 

Projector 1

One used a simple film-camera icon with a light-beam coming out of it (which I realized while drawing it really made it more of a projector icon).

 

Shadow 1

Another, my personal favorite, had a movie screen, with the word “Cinéma” floating in front of it, casting a shadow which formed the word “Vérité.” I appreciated how the concept had levels, pointing out the illusion of cinema in the “This is Not a Pipe” sense, as well as more specifically how there is an inherent tension in the form of the documentary by using dramaturgical and storytelling devices (to different extent than written reporting) while presenting what may be taken to be an objective, factual account. The dichotomy between communicating truth through a medium consisting wholly of illusion is what I’m getting at, here.

If this concept went ahead, it was my intention to create it in 3D, so the lines of perspective and depth effects would match up more effectively than they do in this sketch.

 

I had another concept that drew on this idea, where a realistic silhouette of a bird in flight would be a shadow cast by a hand-puppet, but I couldn’t think of a way to arrange this in a square still frame that could be seen in forms as small as a postage stamp. It’d be easy enough to communicate the concept in an animated form, so I guess I’ve come up with my production logo, assuming no one else uses the idea in the meantime. Or has used it already, for that matter.

 

Flim Strip 1

The other alternative I offered was the title of the podcast on a film-strip background.

 

Just before presenting these, I was told the title of the podcast had been changed to “Observational,” so my shadow-casting idea was out, as it required two words. Of the remaining choices, the film-strip concept was the winner, and we went through the normal process of revisions.

 

Observational_Evolution

As you can see, after the rough size of the various elements was settled on, I moved to a more realistic design for the film strip for the production version, with properly-spaced sprockets and even a stereo soundtrack.

 

One thing I hadn’t anticipated was that the icon might be shown tiled on top of itself in a podcast client. When I downloaded the multiple consecutive episodes in Overcast, I realized that was a greater oversight than I had thought.

Overcast Old Icon

I went back to my laughably-named “Final” Photoshop file (one day, I’ll learn to stop using that word) and began adjusting it with tiling in mind. I made the sprockets along the sides take up an even amount of the frame, and adjusted the “film cells” in the center so the preceding and succeeding frames would be cut off in their center. I also added an additional gradient layer to the top and bottom frames to darken them evenly along the edge.

Overcast New Icon

 

 

And here, at long last, is the fina— that is to say, most current version.

Observational_Album_Art_Adjusted_2015-02-15

You can download Observational via iTunes, or wherever fine podcasts are available.

Something you want to add to this briefing, Captain?

Diaspora is a space combat simulation game set in the universe of the remade Battlestar Galactica, and based on the Freespace 2 engine. It’s super-fun and polished, and if you ever wanted to fly a Viper, you should probably download it now. A while ago, the call came out once again for volunteers, specifically mentioning visual effects animators. I leapt at the chance.

When you ask to join the Diaspora team, there’s an audition process where you’re given a minor assignment in whatever your area is. The original concept for mine was deceptively simple: In several episodes, the Galatica’s “war room” was seen, which had as its centerpiece a large light-table where the crew pushed around little models with sticks to plan attacks, or keep track of battles that were in-progress. The concept was to have a 3D-rendered version of the table and these models, and to show them being pushed around in a cutscene, to replace one of the in-engine briefings for “Shattered Armistice,” the first episodic release of Diaspora.

Warroom
Warroom_overview
Models_2012_10_15_a
Models_2012_10_20_a

After some modeling and some R&D figuring out what the best conceit was for how to present it, we settled on the idea that a war room strategy session with the CAG, CO, XO, and other important initials which was recorded by a ceiling-mounted camera, and was being played back for the pilots on the briefing room overhead projector.

Table

After animating the models being pushed around in time to the existing voiceover, I saw there were a lot of holds and dead air, and there were some concepts I was worried weren’t being communicated, such as the location of the missile batteries to be targeted on the enemy ships, so I experimented with cutting in some “gun-cam photos” of the Cylon basestars, and an engineering status screen. These were a hit with the team, so I continued in that vein, using the tabletop models in a supporting role as one visual aid among many.

M2 Gun Cam Vid 2 Missiles

Once I had a completed cut of the briefing, I was officially inducted, which consisted mostly of me getting a little icon on the Diaspora forums implying I know what I’m talking about. Lacking anything else to do, and realizing that it’d be kind of weird to have just one cutscene briefing, I started replacing all the single-player mission briefings for “Shattered Armistice.” Since there was only one mission with a degree of planning or strategic complexity that justifies the use of the war room, I created DRADIS readouts, starcharts, comm-screens, countdown clocks, and whatever else I could think of that the CAG might slap together into a futuristic PowerPoint show for her briefings. I even redid the engineering readout for the first briefing I did, after I’d built up a library of BSG-style computer graphics. And let me give a shoutout to Matt Haley, who recreated the DRADIS screen in Adobe Illustrator and graciously allowed me to use it and build on it in these cutscenes.

FTL System Report Screen Animatable
System Plot M4
Basestar Orbit

The most ambitious section was easily the recording of a pilot being shot down for the third mission’s briefing.

I animated a BSG-style space-battle, shot from a Viper gun-camera, with no cuts. The most challenging part was working out the timing and animation of the camera, so I could show everything I needed to show, without a lot of dead air, while still feeling like something the player would recognize from the show and, more importantly, from their experiences with the game, where they would’ve been playing the mission this recording was depicting moments earlier.

Battle 1
Battle 2
Battle 3
Battle 4

As a bonus, I created desktop-sized renders of all the tabletop models I created for this project, including several that weren’t used. At least, not in this release.

A version of this post appeared on the Diaspora Developer Blog.

DRADIS Icons

These are the icons seen on the DRADIS displays of Colonial vessels in the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica. Updated January 23, 2008 with Cylon Com Relay icon seen in “Razor.”

DRADIS_Icons_1_23_2008.zip In Photoshop format.

dradis1A.ai Galactica 2D Field DRADIS Screen background in Illustrator format, created by Matthew Haley

dradis2.ai Galactica 3D Field DRADIS Screen background in Illustrator format, created by Matthew Haley

BSG_DRADIS_Screens.zip Galactica 2D, 3D, and countdown clock in PSD format, with image sequences for 2D/3D sweeps.

Pegasus_DRADIS_Screens.zip Pegasus 2D/3D Field DRADIS Screen background in Photoshop format, with image sequences for 2D/3D sweeps

DRADIS Showcase with scan-line monitor effect

DRADIS Showcase Clean without the scan-line effect.

DRADIS Contact!

A little side project over the last few days has been recreating the icons of the DRADIS displays from Battlestar Galactica.

A couple notes: The small Unknown icon is conjectural. In “Resurrection Ship Part I” a small ship was represented with the large Unknown icon, and in “Hero,” they used the Cylon Raider icon for a small Unknown, but whited it out when they bleached the flashback scenes, so it was hard to tell. So I made is a combination of the large Unknown and the Raider icons.

Also, the Resurrection Ship icon was only seen once, from a distance, where it appeared to be a modified version of the large Unknown icon, though it was difficult to confirm any details. In “A Measure of Salvation,” the Resurrection Ship II: Son Of Resurrection Ship was represented by the Basestar icon, which was unhelpful. However, the fact that the civilian ships were all made of pieces of the Viper and Raptor icons was very helpful, so I have no ill will.

I’m not sure how or when I’m going to release them. I’m thinking a zip of Photoshop files with the arrow for each icon on a separate layer. I’m also thinking about making them into a set of Mac OS X icons, but I’m not quite sure about that yet.

Final note, thanks to TrekBBS poster backstept for pointing me to the almost-perfect DRADIS display font, “Visitor.” And after drawing out text pixel-by-pixel, “almost” perfect is perfect.